What ‘America First Antitrust' means for Big Tech

Politico

17 hours ago

There's one big exception to the Trump administration's pro-tech, anti-Biden policy agenda so far — its antitrust efforts.
At least since tech CEOs all donated millions of dollars to the inauguration, and sat on the dais, Trump has generally been happy to rub shoulders with Silicon Valley elites, and even more eager to scorch anything that his predecessor put into place.
However, that doesn't quite square with the Trump administration's persistence on Big Tech antitrust. Antitrust regulators have all been pursuing the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice's suits against tech giants like Google and Amazon, some filed under former President Joe Biden, some during President Donald Trump's first term. True, there's some indication that Trump sees those suits as leverage in negotiations with tech CEOs.
Yet, there's also a seemingly genuine ideological drive behind this antitrust approach — a MAGA anti-tech sentiment rooted in Trump's populism and flag waving. It extends to Republicans in Congress, too, where a pending House Appropriations bill would give the DOJ's antitrust division $310 million next year, $77 million more than what Trump asked for.
In the past week, antitrust has come into sharper focus as Gail Slater, the DOJ's competition chief, has become more vocal about enforcement.
Slater has started to publicly make her case for what she calls 'America First Antitrust.' She characterizes enforcement as being an inherently patriotic endeavor that defends the liberty of everyday consumers against high prices and fewer purchasing choices. Yet she also seems to be walking a fine line between competing Republican priorities — balancing the traditional pro-business wing of the GOP with the 'forgotten men and women' strains of Trump's movement.
'The Republican Party has two forces within it,' Fiona Scott Morton, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Obama DOJ's antitrust division, told DFD. 'The money people, corporations who want to be allowed to merge anytime … and then there's the populists who are more against large corporations.'
There's no obvious way to resolve that tension. Slater didn't immediately respond to DFD's question about it, but she has started to stake out a potential middle path.
On Thursday, Slater penned a barn-burning condemnation of dominant cell carriers for harming customers in a DOJ press release, calling them an 'oligopoly' — but notably, it was part of a larger statement announcing that the DOJ wouldn't stand in the way of T-Mobile's $4.4 billion acquisition of UScellular.
Then, in two recent interviews, she went even deeper on Big Tech and protecting consumers, invoking national triumphs in the American Revolution and the Cold War to argue for robust antitrust enforcement. But simultaneously, she warned against being overly aggressive — saying on the Foundation for American Innovation's Tuesday podcast, 'We don't want to be overseeing businesses as if we know what we're doing.'
It's too early to tell whether MAGA antitrust policy will gel into a distinctive and coherent framework. Slater's rhetoric nevertheless hints at an approach that will be a bit less hands-on than what we saw under Biden, but more proactive than recent Republican administrations.
'We're not doing Bush antitrust, we're not doing Biden antitrust,' Slater said in an appearance on former White House advisor Steve Bannon's 'War Room' podcast last Wednesday. 'The pendulum swings, but we're doing Trump antitrust.'
Slater isn't the only administration official to pitch a MAGA spin on competition policy. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has also outlined a vision that caters to the Trump voter base, framing antitrust enforcement as a way to rein in online platforms that the GOP has long accused of censorsing conservative viewpoints.
And Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a MAGA stalwart mounting a primary challenge against Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), has been using antitrust laws as a culture war cudgel to beat back social media moderation and corporations' environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices.
Slater's own focus on Silicon Valley has deep roots: She had a reputation for being wary of tech companies' monopolistic practices during her stint at the FTC's competition bureau from 2004 to 2014.
During her current tenure, the DOJ has tried to force Google to share its search data and limit its AI development in an antitrust case over its search monopoly. The department has also continued to pursue a Biden administration case regarding Apple's alleged smartphone monopoly, and sued to block Hewlett Packard from acquiring the software company Juniper Networks — though the DOJ settled at the last minute.
When Bannon asked Slater about the tech CEOs who flanked Trump during his inauguration, she brushed the idea of industry-friendliness aside as a 'media narrative.' She cited the president's appointment of tech watchdogs like Ferguson and Mark Meador to the FTC, and referred to herself as a 'cop on the beat.' At the end of the interview, she gave Bannon a souvenir wristband made by the DOJ's trial team in the Google case. It bore the words: 'radical & dangerous' and 'reckless & irresponsible' – which Google had used to describe the DOJ's remedy proposal.
Beyond this big talk, there are early indications that there might be some concrete departures from the previous administration's antitrust practices too. In an April address at the University of Notre Dame Law School, Slater asserted that she would advance her agenda through enforcement rather than policy — an approach in line with Trump's pro-business deregulatory aims. On the FAI's podcast, 'The Dynamist,' she pointed out that the DOJ has been quicker to terminate cases or conclude them with settlement agreements. Slater also echoed Paxton and Ferguson in framing antitrust law as a tool to prevent large platforms from censoring conservative speech.
William Kovacic, who chaired the FTC under former President George W. Bush, told DFD that Slater seems to be advertising America First Antitrust as 'a sensible centered program that's not too far to the left, not too far to the right.'
Yet an ostensible emphasis on Silicon Valley doesn't seem all that different from what the previous administration was doing under former FTC chair Lina Khan, who went after companies like Nvidia and Microsoft. In fact, it can be difficult to put your finger on how exactly America First Antitrust differs from Khan's approach. Khan also wanted to be a populist champion for downtrodden consumers, accusing grocery stores of inflating prices. Beyond her broad proclamations, though, there's still a possibility that Slater's later antitrust moves could fit within the GOP's classic libertarian mold in practice.
'There's rhetoric and then there's actions, and those two things need not be the same,' said Scott Morton, the former Obama official. 'With rhetoric, you might be able to make some people happy, [but] you don't notice that the actions don't quite line up.'
The Epstein saga may haunt the FCC
Democrats are trying to use the intra-MAGA blowup over Jeffrey Epstein as leverage to stymie the Federal Communications Commission's news media investigations.
As POLITICO's John Hendel reports, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a letter on Wednesday to FCC Chair Brendan Carr regarding a 2024 'Fox & Friends' interview with Trump. In the broadcasted interview, Trump responded to a question about whether he would release the Epstein files by saying, 'Yeah, yeah I would.' The senators accused Fox of misleadingly editing the interview by not airing the rest of the answer, in which Trump seemed to hedge his affirmation, adding there may be 'phony stuff in there' that could 'affect people's lives.'
The Senators claim that this editorial decision was more egregious than what's being alleged in the commission's investigation into '60 Minutes.' The FCC is looking into CBS's editorial decision to broadcast two different sections of an answer that Kamala Harris gave when promoting the interview and then airing the full version.
'To be clear, the FCC should not investigate either CBS or Fox,' the letter reads. 'Editorial discretion lies at the heart of press freedom and should not be subject to government interference.'
Congress gets rattled by a chip policy pivot
Lawmakers are calling for answers on why the Trump administration is lifting restrictions on sales of certain semiconductors to China, POLITICO's Ari Hawkins and Anthony Adragna reported Tuesday.
In a Monday blog post, Nvidia announced that the government had assured the company it would approve its applications to sell its H20 AI chips to Chinese customers. The next day, AMD said it also had plans to resume sales of its advanced MI308 chips in China. The White House had imposed export controls on both the H20 and MI308 chips in April.
Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, told POLITICO that he 'strongly supported' the export controls and would seek clarification from the Commerce Department on Nvidia's statement. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said it was 'shameful' that 'Nvidia and the Trump Administration are prioritizing sending these chips to the People's Republic of China.'
Nvidia told POLITICO in a statement, 'the Trump Administration's approach promotes American technology leadership and benefits our national and economic security. The [U.S. government] has full visibility over every H20 sale to China.'
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